The Indonesian government will step up its efforts to lower poverty and inequality levels, also known as Gini ratio, a minister said here on Wednesday.

"We will put a priority to programs that focus on poor communities, and will create more jobs," Sofyan Djalil, minister for the national development planning, told the media in Jakarta

The minister said that the government will provide financial assistance directly to the low-income people.

The government has doubled funds allocated for development projects at the village level to about 47 trillion rupiah (about 3.579 billion U.S. dollars) this year and plans to raise the figure to 80 trillion rupiah (equal to 6.320 billion dollars) next year, according to the finance ministry.

The national statistic agency recently reported that the Gini ratio decreased to 0.40 in September from 0.41 in March of last year, which means that the social gap between the rich and poor people has narrowed.

Gini ratio has been used as a reference in policy making of economy. Endit

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